Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Please help an old-school mechanic

I just bought a used 2000 SVT and love it. My SVT has 52,000 miles on it. I need some help diagnosing a problem. It has a high-rpm miss at part throttle.

As background, I have to admit I am a bit of an old-school car mechanic and engineer. My previous car was a 1966 Dodge Polara with a 225 slant six. I bought this car new when I got out of the Army. I have run this car into the ground as my sole daily driver, accumulating 388,000 miles over the last 35 years. I know the Polara like the back of my hand, as I have rebuilt the engine 5 times over the years.

I finally decided to pull the Polara�??s plug and permanently park it in the ravine when rust problems finally won out over my band-aid welding and fabrication skills. The floor pan and frame rusted so severely that the A-pillar buckled and the roof folded a little bit.

Which brings me to the SVT Contour. What a cool car! I love that lusty engine. Plus that 6-speed tranny (6 speeds counting reverse, that is) is a dream to snick through. It is heaven-sent compared to the Polara�??s 3 on the tree. I don�??t know why so many people extol the virtues of Honda�??s manual trannys; clearly the MTX75 in the SVT is the paragon of smoothness, compared to 35 year old column shifters.

But yesterday I noticed a high-rpm miss at part throttle. By high-rpm I mean anything over 2500 rpm. By the way, this motor really revs like a champ! The Polara seemed to like low revs, probably because of its 3.2 lb pistons or 4.312�?� stroke. I would never have dreamed of taking it up over 2500 rpm. Mercy me, the torture we inflict on these new cars! I have even heard that some cars can rev upwards of 6000 rpm now.

Anyway, there was a high rpm miss. So I moved the Contour into the barn and up on cinder blocks and got to work diagnosing my new dream chariot�??s problem. Imagine my surprise when I opened the hood and found a plethora of things amiss.

For example, I could not find the distributor. And if I can�??t find the distributor, then how can I set the vacuum advance? The Polara really responded well to lots of vacuum advance �?? that�??s the coolest technology to come to distributors since spur gears for quiet operation and rubber gaskets to keep the rain and mice out.

I figured that if I had a misfire, I was missing one of three things: air, fuel, or spark. Air is okay, since the Polara�??s 225 still runs, so there must be enough quality air around my barn. So then I checked fuel. I hooked up my Schrader valve pressure gage to the test port on the fuel rail. Imagine my surprise when I saw the fuel pressure at 42 psi and climbing! I immediately shut the engine off, since we all know that fuel pressure should never exceed 7 psi. That�??s what the single pumper on the Polara always read. I am amazed those fuel lines didn�??t burst right then and there. I have heard other reports of fiery cataclysm on the CEG lately, something about a hot tub incident, and I want no part of it.

Poking around the engine bay, I was amazed by the engine block. I had never seen a block looking so pale and silver in color. I have dabbled in metallurgy for years and I immediately recognized that this was not nodular or spherdoidal cast iron. I cut off a little chunk from a mounting tab near the tranny and sent it to the Metallurgy lab at work for some analysis. Imagine my surprise when I found that the block was made of A356 sand cast aluminum! This is the stuff of rocket science, this aluminum. I guess cars are really going space age now. I remember reading in Popular Science as a boy about how the first Jupiter lander was going to be made out of that stuff. And now it shows up on my new car. Do you think maybe I got a prototype piece that somehow slipped out of the R&D lab? Or did Ford recently take to selling prototype cars in response to financial woes?

A more pedestrian question: can the SVT�??s brakes be converted to drums? I would like to change at least the back brakes to drums, maybe the fronts too, since drums did so well on all 4 corners of the Polara as long as I didn�??t stop too quickly from highway speeds. I was averaging over 100k miles life on a set!

Have any other shade tree mechanics out there noticed that none of your wrenches fit the Contour that well? It seems like all my standard bits are just a little bit too small, or just a little bit too big. For example: to get the lug nuts off, the 7/8�?� socket seemed a little too big, so I had to forcefully pound on a 13/16�?� 6 point socket with a lead mallet. I am worried that I will have to repeat this abusive fitting procedure ever time I come across a new fastener. Will rod bolts and head studs take kindly to this? Or am I missing something here?

I dunno, maybe I should just give up on the SVT and fix the Polara instead. The SVT seems to have some fundamental design flaws, as outlined above. If I invested in a proper sheet metal brake and a lot of stainless sheet, I think I could refabricate significant portions of the frame and floor pan and have the Polara back as good as 1966 new. Then the $30 I just spent on new wing vent window weather-stripping wouldn�??t go to waste.

What do you guys think?

-Harden Thomas

Hey, Harden. I totally enjoyed your post, it's great to start off the day with a good laugh! I was rolling on the ground after I read the part about the wrenches that don't fit, and the wonderful new space age metal, aluminum.

Congrats on keeping the Polara running for so long. That is a major accomplishment. I love good old V8 Americana too, but they have a way of turning back into the elements of which they are made.

Sorry I can't help with the missing at high RPMs. There is an amazing amount of knowledge and experience on this board, though, so you will get a lot of good info today from the members. I bet someone will advise you about the diagnostic computer codes our cars put out when there is a problem. Someone will probably also advise you about cleaning the MAF in the intake system.

Don't be alarmed if you also get some humor-challenged replies, too. It happens even on the best of forums.

Hmmm, did you perhaps notice that your engine was pointing the wrong way too? Beleive it or not they actaully sent a few of these cars out of the factory with the engine installed (get this) sideways

Maybe since they forgot to put on the distributor and the carberator they got mixed up in the engine orientation too

1966 Dodge Polara for reference.

Member's prior post Hot Tub Tales

is it april 1 already?